ASUS Rampage III Black Edition review -
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If one thing is a fact then it's that the X58 chipset is technology that keeps on living on the edge. Quick match tells me that the X58 chipset is now roughly two and a half years old. And it is still alive and very much kicks ass big-time! While P67 for Sandy Bridge is the equivalent kickass product, the X58 based motherboards give you some advantages, and that would be the Core i7 socket 1366 processor, including the 6-core Nehalem based processors of course.

What surprises me is that X58 is like a Duracell battery, you know the commercial with the bunny that keeps on going? That's X58 and that's also the reason why we still see new motherboard designs based on X58.

Some add USB 3.0 and SATA 6G while others take it even further. Such a manufacturer is ASUS, they are launching the ASUS Rampage III Black Edition and it just has to be one of the most exclusive X58 motherboards we have ever had our hands on.

I'm not joking here, this motherboard is ridiculous (in the good sense of the word). My first hint was when I took the product out of the packaging, the motherboard is seriously heavy, and then you start checking the features and tick them off your wish list, it's all there man.

Specifications

Socket

Socket 1366

Chipset

Intel X58

FSB/QPI

6.4 GT/s

Memory

DDR3

Slots

6

Audio

7.1

LAN

10/100/1000 Mbps

NICS

2

FireWire

-

USB

11 x USB 2.0

Form factor

ATX

Special

3x SLI / 4x CrossFire Support

Serial ATA

6 x Serial ATA II 300

PCI-E x1

2 x

PCI-E x16

4 x

USB 3.0

4 x USB 3.0

Serial ATA III

2 x Serial ATA III

Maximum memory

48 GB

Improved overclockability, black design (including a black colored BIOS). The spec-sheet might read pretty similar to last year's Rampage III Extreme, but there have been a few tweaks alright. The board now sports a quartet of PCIe x16 slots capable of supporting three-way SLI or four-way CrossFireX, support for 24GB DDR3 at speeds of up to 2,200MHz and then the fun begins, USB 3.0, SATA 6G, a ThunderBolt add-on card that integrates Xonar sound as well as BigFoot's Killer NPU.

According to Asus, the audio provided by Xonar gives sound quality that is four times better than a regular sound card. The design of the heatsinks and VRMs are also redesigned and yeah, in addition to that more tweaks are to be found under the hood.

ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition X79 reviewASUS recently released an update to their Rampage IV series motherboards with a black edition. It's big, fast and black and has tweaking written all over it. The board is just gorgeous and totally ...

ASUS Rampage IV Extreme reviewThe ROG team this time went wild, releasing a motherboard with all the features that last-gen motherboards should have such as USB 3.0 connectivity, Bluetooth, eSATA connectors, SATA 6.0Gbps, and 7.1 channel audio, but the real x-factor of the Rampage IV Extreme can only be found when we look at its overclocking features. Head on over to the next page where we'll discuss the X79 chipset, the respective ASUS model. Then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) and X79 Platform.

ASUS Rampage III Black Edition reviewASUS are launching the ASUS Rampage III Black Edition and it just has to be the most exclusive X58 motherboard we have ever had our hands on. Improved overclockability, black design (including a black colored BIOS). The spec-sheet might read pretty similar to last year's Rampage III Extreme, but there have been a few tweaks alright. The board now sports a quartet of PCIe x16 slots capable of supporting three-way SLI or four-way CrossFireX, support for 24GB DDR3 at speeds of up to 2,200MHz and then the fun begins, USB 3.0, SATA 6G, a ThunderBolt add-on card that integrates Xonar sound as well as BigFoot's Killer NPU.

ASUS Rampage III Gene reviewWithin that motto ASUS has it's own Gene series within the motherboard line up. Now if you put that on the X58 platform, it's called Rampage by ASUS. And then when this apocalyptic group of minions and demons called 'Republic of Gamers' aka ROG gets their hands on a product like this, you can expect improvements and extra overclock features.